Ancient counterfeiters and their fake coins
coinweek.com
coinweek.com
> Mercury readily forms a very soft alloy (called an “amalgam”, it has the consistency of butter) with gold or silver. This was smeared evenly over the surface of the base metal core, which was then heated in a furnace to drive off the mercury as a vapor, leaving the precious metal firmly bound to the surface. An example is a gold plated quinarius of Augustus, described by the cataloguer as “amusing,” that sold for $254 in a recent auction.
I didn't know that was around back then. Fire gilding is as bad as it sounds. I'm sure they were somewhat aware of the health effects of mercury as they were with lead. This process would absolutely destroy the brains of anybody doing it consistently, but I guess that was worth the risk (and counterfeiting would usually have been a capital crime anyway).
Spoiler, they go in more detail about this process at the end of the series.
Would suggest a listen. It's amazing.
I once drove an extra hour out of my way just to finish an episode.
===Mild spoiler alert===
Isaac Newton was offered the position of Master of His Majesty's Mint more-or-less as a sinecure, not really expected to do much, but he took his responsibilities seriously, firstly by effectively managing the replacement of the realm's old coinage (a project that he had proposed as a solution of the then-unfolding currency crisis), and secondly by tracking down counterfeiters in a deadly (to the latter) game of cat and mouse. He seems to have taken counterfeiting as a personal affront.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/louis-colavecchio-dead...
They are not. There are many, many, many cut coins, and often the cuts are "disfiguring" which will typically harm the "eye appeal" of the coin.
Cutting coins was common practice of the time, and if a coin passed through many different hands, it was basically inevitable it would end up cut.
It's kind of like seeing writing on cash... Most people don't write on their money, but enough people handle it that it's going to happen.
The most valuable coins typically sat in hoards, uncirculated, since circulation would itself wear on the coin and reduce the grade. I agree that seems a little backward, since it's not nearly as interesting to imagine the "life" of a pristine coin, but it is what it is.
These things don't have intrinsic value. They're worth what collectors think they're worth. I'd be happy if I'm interested in collecting something that is unpopular/inexpensive. Now, if anyone really cares, like if someone has their own hoard of defaced genuine coins, they can try to hype them up in normal ways, write editorials in trade mags, talk at coin shows, or, most likely get numismatics influencers to hype them up, etc.
The ancient tests didn't just chop into the edges like the article mentioned, but cut gashes into Athena's face, into the owl, and often both with several severe gashes marring the coin, significantly reducing their value as an ancient art object.
Some people collect things like that.
Is that just because they contain less precious metal? I’d have though that was a small part of the value
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Hour_2
:)
OTOH, high quality counterfeits are expensive and there is lots of energy directed at identifying counterfeits and, once identified, dealing with the production and distribution (and even if you are a state actor that thinks your production is safe from outside retaliation, the channels you use to benefit from it in interaction with the outside world are generally not), so a literal unlicensed money printing operation is not as much of a metaphorical license to print money as it might naively seem.
Ironically, large deposits of minerals that contain it are found in China, the US, and Russia.
You can't really take it to a bank. You can buy a cheap banger (car), but forget wandering into a dealership and dropping 25k in cash. (Apart from anything else, they'd be worried the cash was stolen or counterfeit.)
Travelling with it is risky. Flying especially. And in the US there's the danger of confiscation by the police. Everywhere else there's confiscation by the public as well.
You can't buy a house. Certainly no shares or most other assets. Hotels, maybe, depending ion the hotel. Nothing too fancy.
Groceries sure. Day to day expenses, sure. Just no Amazon.
Like I say, cash just doesn't scale well (despite what you see in the movies.)
None of those drawbacks mean it's a bad idea - just that it's not simple and ultimately comes back to fundamental questions of value exchange. I.e. Most of the time it costs fewer resources to exchange things for money on the black market than arranging to have extremely high quality forgeries in the hands of your agents.
Motorcycles. Work at a motorcycle dealership and you will see customers with cash for a 10 to 25k$ motorcycle. Also, in the middle east it is normal to spend cash on even large items. A Saudi millionaire wanting to buy a car with $200,000 of cash is not unusual.
Other countries have their own terms for what they’re doing, and they aren’t the same terms.
The confusing part is that due to the US dollars reach, a LOT of foreign banks are US ‘licensed’ in order to interact with the US banking infrastructure, so there is some degree of it they need to apply in some cases. But it’s still US law only, and they don’t apply it in general.
Aka since 1970 in the US.
That a few close allies cut-n-pasted the terms decades later doesn’t change it.
Sell it to a cartel at a steep discount. They’re experts at dealing with large globs of cash.
Collectors be damned. I would rather own a coin with a history. A ancient coin with a test cut, or even an outright forgery, is more interesting than any pure and clean coin. I also like the old coins with the punctures, the ones that were clearly worn as a necklace. A coin that was around the neck of a real person walking around ancient Rome is way more interesting than one sat gathering dust in a vault.
My Athenian owl doesn't have test cuts since I'd rather have one that's prettier to look at, but if I could get my hands on an ancient forgery of an Athenian tetradrachma with a forged test cut then I'd be interested. Those exist, the counterfeiters escalating to fake marks of authenticity was inevitable, and those have a fun enough story that the fact that they're ugly wouldn't bother me so much, but in general I prefer more attractive examples that I like to look at. The test cuts were definitely not all on the side, lots of circulated coins are severely marred with 1 or more face gashes or owl gashes which is why they're not desired.
All of these usages (including as amulets) are extra frequent if the coin features a gorgon's head, because the image itself was said to repel bad luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgoneion
I'm into ancient coins and I completely agree with you about cut coins being extra interesting - another interesting dramatic thing to dive into are overstrikes, coins that have been 'reminted' at a later time than their original minting, and ancient imitation coins - such as those made by tribal peoples living adjacent to Roman territories.
These are generally interesting for such fun features as very eclectic fusion art (think Roman iconography by way of celtic or germanic swirls and stylization), and by sometimes having gibberish text on them when made by an illiterate artisan.